Oceanic

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from the poetic structures that cultivate dazzling settings to the metaphors that brim with possibility, Oceanic… reawakens my curiosity for a world that still holds so many undiscovered wonders. We’ve got timeless pieces by renowned poets that encapsulate the grandeur and enigma of the big blue. If the three poems I have just discussed function as a culmination of Dickinson’s treatment of the sea, they reflect the fact that throughout her career, the sea appears in moments of interpretive openness and an occlusion of human agency. It culminates in an ecstatic account of eel sex, coiling in billowing clouds of golden milt and ova, “sparks from the cornucopian flame / of Archaea’s unkillable, dark pleroma”. Instead, the “singular tooth” of a narwhal “needles you like a compass pointed toward home,” while “the paper nautilus ripple-flashes scarlet and two kinds of violet when it silvers you near.

In this poem, longer than most of Dickinson’s works, she moves between lighthearted images of a walk with her dog on the shore and “Mermaids in the Basement,” and the grimmer possibility of being drowned by the incoming tide. Near the end of her life, Dickinson began writing poems that referred to the sea, and particularly to the experience or threat of drowning, with increasing frequency. What one can see out in the sunlight is always less interesting than what goes on behind a windowpane.

The human brain (not mind), may be able to absorb the sea “As Sponges – Buckets – do –”, thus suggesting the enormous power of human consciousness, but the fact that consciousness is located in a part of the human physical anatomy also reminds us of how tenuous this power is. B, suggesting that “The Brain is deeper than the sea – / For – hold them – Blue to Blue – / The one the other will absorb – / As Sponges – Buckets – do ”. But in Spenser’s poem, the poet ended with the reassuring thought of immortality and the existence of God. The poem is one of the great narrative poems in English, with the old mariner recounting his story, with its hardships and tragedy, to a wedding guest.

The ocean — both wild and calm, dangerous and beautiful — is a made up of contradictions and mystery.The original Dickinson Electronic Archives was launched in 1994 and was regularly updated until 2012.

Although these can start as simple word associations at first, why not encourage students to get more sophisticated with their writing and work on building metaphors and similies using oceanic language? Photograph: Album/Alamy JMW Turner’s Rough Sea with Wreckage painted in oil on canvas between 1840 and 1845. We and our partners use data for Personalised ads and content, ad and content measurement, audience insights and product development. This goes the same way with death because for me, death is not the end of life, rather, it’s a part of it. If your class enjoyed this metaphor poem exercise, why not try one of our other recommended resources to round out your lesson plan?

The attempt to rise” suggests the Christian hope of a bodily resurrection, and it is juxtaposed against the idea that drowning—death itself—has its own sort of cosmic dignity, which accounts of human existence that seek to elide or triumph over death leave out. On the ocean’s surface, we ride in boats and relax on beaches to watch the waves crash against the shore.